Our First Overseas Adventure!!

We've been home almost 3 weeks so I thought I'd better get some photos posted about our amazing trip to Canada and USA!!  Here is a tiny selection of the 850 I took!!

We had 2 weeks with the Emma's school travelling around Canada and some of the USA, and we then had 5 nights in Orlando, Florida to see Ryan while he's there for 13 weeks water ski training.

Beautiful Vancouver Harbour

Golden Gate Bridge - San Francisco

Lombard Street - the crookedest street in the world - San Francisco

The most famous streetscape - you might recognise it as the "Full House" house - San Francisco

Alcatraz Island - excellent tour - San Francisco

Emma looking a bit bewildered about the size of her breakfast!

Every second vehicle is a "pickup truck"!!

Custer's Last Stand - Montana

The water towers in every town.

Oil rigs or "grasshoppers" as they're called are on almost every farm throughout Montana

Our fabulous host family in Sidney, Montana - Krista, Kathy, Kirk, Hailey and Jared

The prairies heading towards Canada - all wheat and canola

We visited a Huterite community near Sasskatoon, Saskatchewan.  They farmed 12,000ac, had a large commercial dairy, beef feedlot and poultry farm to support the 105 people living there.

All the females wore neck to ankle outfits with headscarves, and they all wore their hair this way

Our teenagers were fascinated with the Huterite teenagers, just as they were fascinated by ours!

It was 30 degrees when we drove through a huge hailstorm

Very odd!

American red barns were everywhere

Calgary Tower

Emma and one of the Calgary Stampede mascots

Visiting the Calgary Stampede

The chuck wagon races - so much action and super fast horses!

An Indian village at the Stampede

Canadian Mounties

Calf roping at the Stampede Rodeo

The bullrider who wins on the final day takes home $100,000 prizemoney!!

Heading for the Canadian Rockies

The Fairmont Hotel at Banff

Castle Rock 

Farmer Phil and I at Lake Louise - this was the highlight for me!

Beautiful Lake Louise

Friendly critters!

Moraine Lake - so blue it was ridiculous!

Farmer Phil and Emma heading up the valley to the Colombia Icefields

Athabasca Glacier

Some of the Yanco kids posing with the Canadian flag on top of the glacier

Gorgeous lake and Rockies

The luckiest kids in the world!

Hogwarts Castle at Universal Studios, Orlando Florida

Emma was super excited to have a "butter beer"

The Weasley car

Sea World, Orlando Florida

Ryan jumping at Lake Grew, Orlando

Ryan, Jason, Hilary, Jeff, Nic, Casey and Michael - more of the luckiest kids in the world!

Another 5 Weeks Go By...................

............... and not a single blog posting!!!  How slack am I?!

We had a shocking end to 2012, so it's taken a while to get back into the swing of things!! 

First off Farmer Phil's 74 year old dad broke his leg in 4 places stepping down off a tractor!  Then we lost our beautiful Jack to a snake bite.  Someone backed into our new ute while I was doing the Christmas grocery shopping and broke the tail light.  Then Christmas Eve there was a short, sharp storm hit our house with howling winds and rain resulting in uprooted hedge plants, a smashed bird house, rainwater coming underneath the roof tiles and into the house via light fittings, a blown in garage roller door, and a 40kg pool cover reel picked up and tossed like it weighed nothing.  I know it's nothing compared to the devastation that has hit the whole of Australia in the last month with bushfires and now flooding, but we thought we must have "kicked a Chinaman" or something for so many things to go wrong in the space of 7 days!!

Anyway, here is what's been happening since my last post!

Christmas Day was at our house with Farmer Phil's family.  My brother in law's 5 children had a great time utilising the pool for the afternoon!

Christmas lunch was outside on the deck

New Year's Eve Farmer Phil and I went to the most beautiful beach wedding ever!!  It was at Moonta Bay in SA.  Congratulations Murray and Nicki!!

Farmer Phil and I in our NYE Glam - minus stilettos on the beach!!

We then had our annual 2 week waterskiing/camping holiday at Renmark, SA where not a single photo was taken but a great time was had by all!  First week the weather was all over 40 degrees with a top of 46!!

Last April I booked tickets for Farmer Phil and I to see Cirque Du Soleil's OVO in Melbourne during January.  Everytime we go to Melbourne and walk past The Hotel Windsor I always comment how I'd love to stay there sometime.  Well we did this time!  It was only for 1 night but sooooo worth it!

The dining room where breakfast was served.

A Superior Room very similar to the one we stayed in complete with huge dressing room, marble bathroom and old world class!! 

The 3 clowns of OVO - "Ladybug, the Foreigner and Master Flipo"!

"Ant" acrobats were absolutely perfect in their synchronisation of kiwifruit!

The "Firefly" diabolo juggler was amazing!

"Spider" Contortionists were unbelievable!

Love duet of the "Butterflies" rope adagio!

The "Flea" acrobatic troupe were amazing!

And now we're back to the reality of getting Emma organised and back to school this week for her very last year of school ever!!!!!  Year 12 and the Higher School Certificate here we come!

Emma has also been busy rehearsing since early November for a show she is performing in during February/March in Wagga Wagga.  It's called "Life in the Spotlight" and is an all singing, all dancing show featuring songs from Glee, Hairspray, The Jersey Boys, Rock of Ages etc with all proceeds going to Telstra Childflight.  She started out having 3 Solo's as well as being the Lead Backing Vocalist, but now she has been given 3 more Solo's to do.  So she's been a very busy girl trying to learn all the songs as well as the choreography and staging!

The upside for the start of 2013 is that we've had no Summer rain here so that means no spraying of weeds over the 5,000ac for Farmer Phil.  Ryan has been busy with his tournament waterskiing events and doing lots of training.  Farmer Phil is happy to have some spare time to go along and help out at the tournaments and do lots of boat driving!

It's been back to our little shop "Kindrawares" for me over the past 2 weeks.  After a very busy Christmas period, it's very quiet at the moment with lots of people still away on holidays.  Hopefully once the kids are all settled back into school routine, then the shop will be buzzing again!!